Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to pwayers; some may accept donations or awwow pwayers to purchase virtuaw items, whiwe oders charge a mondwy subscription fee. MUDs can be accessed via standard tewnet cwients, or speciawized MUD cwients which are designed to improve de user experience. Numerous games are wisted at various web portaws, such as The Mud Connector.

Numerous graphicaw MUDs were created on de PLATO system at de University of Iwwinois and oder American universities dat used PLATO, beginning in 1975. Among dem were "pedit5", "oubwiette", "moria", "avadar", "krozair", "dungeon", "dnd", "crypt", and "dryguwch". By 1978-79, PLATO MUDs were heaviwy in use on various PLATO systems, and exhibited a marked increase in sophistication in terms of 3D graphics, storytewwing, user invowvement, team pway, and depf of objects and monsters in de dungeons. PLATO MUDs are often ignored by historians and by de creators of oder MUDs whose work came water.

Inspired by Adventure, a group of students at MIT in de summer of 1977 wrote a game for de PDP-10 minicomputer; cawwed Zork, it became qwite popuwar on de ARPANET. Zork was ported, under de fiwename DUNGEN ("dungeon"), to FORTRAN by a programmer working at DEC in 1978.[17][1]

In 1978 Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University in de UK, started working on a muwti-user adventure game in de MACRO-10 assembwy wanguage for a DEC PDP-10. He named de game MUD (Muwti-User Dungeon), in tribute to de Dungeon variant of Zork, which Trubshaw had greatwy enjoyed pwaying.[18] Trubshaw converted MUD to BCPL (de predecessor of C), before handing over devewopment to Richard Bartwe, a fewwow student at Essex University, in 1980.[19][20][21] The game revowved around gaining points tiww one achieved de Wizard rank, giving de character immortawity and speciaw powers over mortaws.

MUD, better known as Essex MUD and MUD1 in water years, ran on de Essex University network, and became more widewy accessibwe when a guest account was set up dat awwowed users on JANET (a British academic X.25 computer network) to connect on weekends and between de hours of 2 AM and 8 AM on weekdays.[22] It became de first Internet muwtipwayer onwine rowe-pwaying game in 1980, when Essex University connected its internaw network to ARPANet.[23]

The originaw MUD game was cwosed down in wate 1987,[24] reportedwy under pressure from CompuServe, to whom Richard Bartwe had wicensed de game. This weft MIST, a derivative of MUD1 wif simiwar gamepway, as de onwy remaining MUD running on de Essex University network, becoming one of de first of its kind to attain broad popuwarity. MIST ran untiw de machine dat hosted it, a PDP-10, was superseded in earwy 1991.[25]

1985 saw de origin of a number of projects inspired by de originaw MUD. These incwuded Gods by Ben Laurie, a MUD1 cwone dat incwuded onwine creation in its endgame, and which became a commerciaw MUD in 1988;[26] and MirrorWorwd,[27] a towkienesqwe MUD started by Pip Cordrey who gadered some peopwe on a BBS he ran to create a MUD1 cwone dat wouwd run on a home computer.

Neiw Neweww, an avid MUD1 pwayer, started programming his own MUD cawwed SHADES during Christmas 1985, because MUD1 was cwosed down during de howidays. Starting out as a hobby, SHADES became accessibwe in de UK as a commerciaw MUD via British Tewecom's Prestew and Micronet networks.[28] A scandaw on SHADES wed to de cwosure of Micronet, as described in Indra Sinha's net-memoir, The Cybergypsies.[29]

At de same time, Compunet started a project named Muwti-User Gawaxy Game as a Science Fiction awternative to MUD1, a copy of which dey were running on deir system at de time. When one of de two programmers weft CompuNet, de remaining programmer, Awan Lenton, decided to rewrite de game from scratch and named it Federation II (at de time no Federation I existed). The MUD was officiawwy waunched in 1989.[30] Federation II was water picked up by AOL, where it became known simpwy as "Federation: Aduwt Space Fantasy". Federation water weft AOL to run on its own after AOL began offering unwimited service.

In 1978, around de same time Roy Trubshaw wrote MUD, Awan E. Kwietz wrote a game cawwed Miwieu using Muwti-Pascaw on a CDC Cyber 6600 series mainframe which was operated by de Minnesota Educationaw Computing Consortium.[31] Kwietz ported Miwieu to an IBM XT in 1983, naming de new port Scepter of Gof. Scepter supported 10 to 16 simuwtaneous users, typicawwy connecting in by modem. It was one of de first commerciaw MUDs; franchises were sowd to a number of wocations. Scepter was first owned and run by GamBit (of Minneapowis, Minnesota), founded by Bob Awberti. GamBit's assets were water sowd to Interpway Productions. Interpway eventuawwy went bankrupt.[32][33]

In 1984, Mark Peterson wrote The Reawm of Angmar, beginning as a cwone of Scepter of Gof. In 1994, Peterson rewrote The Reawm of Angmar, adapting it to MS-DOS (de basis for many diaw-in BBS systems), and renamed it Swords of Chaos. For a few years dis was a very popuwar form of MUD, hosted on a number of BBS systems, untiw widespread Internet access ewiminated most BBSes.[citation needed]

In 1984, Mark Jacobs created and depwoyed a commerciaw gaming site, Gamers Worwd. The site featured two games coded and designed by Jacobs, a MUD cawwed Aradaf (which was water renamed, upgraded and ported to GEnie as Dragon's Gate) and a 4X science-fiction game cawwed Gawaxy, which was awso ported to GEnie. At its peak, de site had about 100 mondwy subscribers to bof Aradaf and Gawaxy. GEnie was shut down in de wate 1990s, awdough Dragon's Gate was water brought to America Onwine before it was finawwy reweased on its own, uh-hah-hah-hah. Dragon's Gate was cwosed on February 10, 2007.[34]

The popuwarity of MUDs of de Essex University tradition escawated in de USA during de wate 1980s when affordabwe personaw computers wif 300 to 2400 bit/s modems enabwed rowe-pwayers to wog into muwti-wine Buwwetin Board Systems and onwine service providers such as CompuServe. During dis time it was sometimes said dat MUD stands for "Muwti Undergraduate Destroyer" due to deir popuwarity among cowwege students and de amount of time devoted to dem.[36]

Avawon: The Legend Lives was pubwished by Yehuda Simmons in 1989. It was de first persistent game worwd of its kind widout de traditionaw hourwy resets[37] and points-based puzzwe sowving progression systems.[38] Avawon introduced eqwiwibrium and bawance (coowdowns), skiww-based pwayer vs pwayer combat and concepts such as pwayer-run governments and pwayer housing.[39]

The first popuwar MUD codebase was AberMUD, written in 1987 by Awan Cox, named after de University of Wawes, Aberystwyf. Awan Cox had pwayed de originaw University of Essex MUD, and de gamepway was heaviwy infwuenced by it.[40] AberMUD was initiawwy written in B for a Honeyweww L66 mainframe under GCOS3/TSS. In wate 1988 it was ported to C, which enabwed it to spread rapidwy to many Unix pwatforms upon its rewease in 1989. AberMUD's popuwarity resuwted in severaw inspired works, de most notabwe of which were TinyMUD, LPMud, and DikuMUD.[41]

Monster was a muwti-user adventure game created by Richard Skrenta for de VAX and written in VMS Pascaw. It was pubwicwy reweased in November 1988.[42][43]Monster was disk-based and modifications to de game were immediate. Monster pioneered de approach of awwowing pwayers to buiwd de game worwd, setting new puzzwes or creating dungeons for oder pwayers to expwore.[44] Monster, which comprised about 60,000 wines of code, had a wot of features which appeared to be designed to awwow Cowossaw Cave Adventure to work in it. Though dere never were many network-accessibwe Monster servers, it inspired James Aspnes to create a stripped down version of Monster which he cawwed TinyMUD.[45]

TinyMUD, written in C and reweased in wate 1989, spawned a number of descendants, incwuding TinyMUCK and TinyMUSH. TinyMUCK version 2 contained a fuww programming wanguage named MUF (Muwti-User Forf), whiwe MUSH greatwy expanded de command interface. To distance itsewf from de combat-oriented traditionaw MUDs it was said dat de "D" in TinyMUD stood for Muwti-User "Domain" or "Dimension"; dis, awong wif de eventuaw popuwarity of acronyms oder dan MUD (such as MUCK, MUSH, MUSE, and so on) for dis kind of server, wed to de eventuaw adoption of de term MU* to refer to de TinyMUD famiwy.[1][2] UberMUD, UnterMUD, and MOO were inspired by TinyMUD but are not direct descendants.[46]

The first version of Hourgwass was written by Yehuda Simmons and water Daniew James for Avawon: The Legend Lives which debuted in 1989 at de wast of de London MUD mega Meets aptwy named 'Adventure '89' [47] and initiawwy hosted on de IOWA system. Initiawwy written in ARM Assembwer on de Acorn Archimedes 440, in 1994 it made de weap from de venerabwe Archimedes to Debian Linux on de PC and water Red Hat where oder dan shifting to Ubuntu (operating system) it has remained ever since. An earwy version of Hourgwass was awso ported to de PC named Vortex by Ben Maizews in 1992.

Awdough written specificawwy for Avawon: The Legend Lives it went on to spawn a number of games incwuding Avawon: The First Age which ran from 1999-2014. The now defunct 1996 Age of Thrones and notabwy Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands started wife in Vortex prior to moving to its own Rapture engine. Hourgwass continues to be devewoped as of 2016 and Avawon: The Legend Lives currentwy has 2901325 written words and 2248374 wines of game-code (wif 2417900 instructions). The originaw game coming in at 1k in 1989 compared to 102gb in January 2016.

In 1987 David Whatwey, having previouswy pwayed Scepter of Gof and Iswand of Kesmai, founded Simutronics wif Tom and Susan Zewinski.[52] In de same year dey demonstrated a prototype of GemStone to GEnie. After a short-wived instance of GemStone II, GemStone III was officiawwy waunched in February 1990. GemStone III became avaiwabwe on AOL in September 1995, fowwowed by de rewease of DragonReawms in February 1996. By de end of 1997 GemStone III and DragonReawms had become de first and second most pwayed games on AOL.[53]

The typicaw MUD wiww describe to you de room or area you are standing in, wisting de objects, pwayers and NPCs in de area, as weww as aww of de exits. To carry out a task de pwayer wouwd enter a text command such as take appwe or attack dragon. Movement around de game environment is generawwy accompwished by entering de direction (or an abbreviation of it) in which de pwayer wishes to move, for exampwe typing norf or just n wouwd cause de pwayer to exit de current area via de paf to de norf.[54]

MUD cwients often contain functions which make certain tasks widin a MUD easier to carry out, for exampwe commands buttons which you can cwick in order to move in a particuwar direction or to pick up an item. There are awso toows avaiwabwe which add hotkey-activated macros to tewnet and MUD cwients giving de pwayer de abiwity to move around de MUD using de arrow keys on deir keyboard for exampwe.[55]

Whiwe dere have been many variations in overaww focus, gamepway and features in MUDs, some distinct sub-groups have formed dat can be used to hewp categorize different game mechanics, game genres and non-game uses.

Perhaps de most common approach to game design in MUDs is to woosewy emuwate de structure of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign focused more on fighting and advancement dan rowe-pwaying. When dese MUDs restrict pwayer-kiwwing in favor of pwayer versus environment confwict and qwesting, dey are wabewed Hack and Swash MUDs. This may be considered particuwarwy appropriate since, due to de room-based nature of traditionaw MUDs, ranged combat is typicawwy difficuwt to impwement, resuwting in most MUDs eqwipping characters mainwy wif cwose-combat weapons. This stywe of game was awso historicawwy referred to widin de MUD genre as "adventure games", but video gaming as a whowe has devewoped a meaning of "adventure game" dat is greatwy at odds wif dis usage.

Most MUDs restrict pwayer versus pwayer combat, often abbreviated as PK (Pwayer Kiwwing). This is accompwished drough hard coded restrictions and various forms of sociaw intervention, uh-hah-hah-hah. MUDs widout dese restrictions are commonwy known as PK MUDs. Taking dis a step furder are MUDs devoted sowewy to dis sort of confwict, cawwed pure PK MUDs, de first of which was Genocide in 1992.[56]Genocide's ideas were infwuentiaw in de evowution of pwayer versus pwayer onwine gaming.[57]

Rowepwaying MUDs, generawwy abbreviated as RP MUDs, encourage or enforce dat pwayers act out de rowe of deir pwaying characters at aww times. Some RP MUDs provide an immersive gaming environment, whiwe oders onwy provide a virtuaw worwd wif no game ewements. MUDs where rowepway is enforced and de game worwd is heaviwy computer-modewed are sometimes known as Rowepway Intensive MUDs, or RPIMUDs.[58] In many cases, Rowe-Pwaying muds attempt to differentiate demsewves from hack and swash types, by dropping de "MUD" name entirewy, and instead using MUX (Muwti User Experience) or MUSH (Muwti User Shared Hawwucination, uh-hah-hah-hah.)

Sociaw MUDs de-emphasize game ewements in favor of an environment designed primariwy for sociawizing. They are differentiated from tawkers by retaining ewements beyond onwine chat, typicawwy onwine creation as a community activity and some ewement of rowe-pwaying. Often such MUDs have broadwy defined contingents of sociawizers and rowepwayers. Server software in de TinyMUD famiwy, or MU*, is traditionawwy used to impwement sociaw MUDs.

A wess-known MUD variant is de tawker, a variety of onwine chat environment typicawwy based on server software wike ew-too or NUTS. Most of de earwy Internet tawkers were LPMuds wif de majority of de compwex game machinery stripped away, weaving just de communication commands. The first Internet tawker was Cat Chat in 1990. Avid users of tawkers are cawwed spods.

Taking advantage of de fwexibiwity of MUD server software, some MUDs are designed for educationaw purposes rader dan gaming or chat. MicroMUSE is considered by some to have been de first educationaw MUD,[59] but it can be argued dat its evowution into dis rowe was not compwete untiw 1994,[60] which wouwd make de first of many educationaw MOOs, Diversity University in 1993, awso de first educationaw MUD. The MUD medium wends itsewf naturawwy to constructionist wearning pedagogicaw approaches. The Mud Institute (TMI) was an LPMud opened in February 1992 as a gadering pwace for peopwe interested in devewoping LPMud and teaching LPC after it became cwear dat Lars Pensjö had wost interest in de project. TMI focussed on bof de LPMud driver and wibrary, de driver evowving into MudOS, de TMI Mudwib was never officiawwy reweased, but was infwuentiaw in de devewopment of oder wibraries.

A graphicaw MUD is a MUD dat uses computer graphics to represent parts of de virtuaw worwd and its visitors.[61] A prominent earwy graphicaw MUD was Habitat, written by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar for Lucasfiwm in 1985.[62] Graphicaw MUDs reqwire pwayers to downwoad a speciaw cwient and de game's artwork. They range from simpwy enhancing de user interface to simuwating 3D worwds wif visuaw spatiaw rewationships and customized avatar appearances.

MUD history has been preserved primariwy drough community sites and bwogs and not drough mainstream sources wif journawistic repute.[75] As of de wate 1990s, a website cawwed The Mud Connector has served as a centraw and curated repository for active MUDs.[76][77][78] In 1995, The Independent reported dat over 60,000 peopwe reguwarwy pwayed about 600 MUDs, up from 170 MUDs dree years prior. The Independent awso noted distinct patterns of sociawization widin MUD communities.[79] Seraphina Brennan of Massivewy wrote dat de MUD community was "in decwine" as of 2009.[75]

Sherry Turkwe devewoped a deory dat de constant use (and in many cases, overuse) of MUDs awwows users to devewop different personawities in deir environments. She uses exampwes, dating back to de text-based MUDs of de mid-1990s, showing cowwege students who simuwtaneouswy wive different wives drough characters in separate MUDs, up to dree at a time, aww whiwe doing schoowwork. The students cwaimed dat it was a way to "shut off" deir own wives for a whiwe and become part of anoder reawity. Turkwe cwaims dat dis couwd present a psychowogicaw probwem of identity for today's youds.[7]

Observations of MUD-pway show stywes of pway dat can be roughwy categorized. Achievers focus on concrete measurements of success such as experience points, wevews, and weawf; Expworers investigate every nook and cranny of de game, and evawuate different game mechanicaw options; Sociawizers devote most of deir energy to interacting wif oder pwayers; and den dere are Kiwwers who focus on interacting negativewy wif oder pwayers, if permitted, kiwwing de oder characters or oderwise dwarting deir pway. Few pwayers pway onwy one way, or pway one way aww de time; most exhibit a diverse stywe.[80] According to Richard Bartwe, "Peopwe go dere as part of a hero's journey—a means of sewf-discovery".[81]

Research has suggested dat various factors combine in MUDs to provide users wif a sense of presence rader dan simpwy communication, uh-hah-hah-hah.[82]

As a noun, de word MUD is variouswy written MUD, Mud, and mud, depending on speaker and context. It is awso used as a verb, wif to mud meaning to pway or interact wif a MUD and mudding referring to de act of doing so.[83] A mudder is, naturawwy, one who MUDs.[84]Compound words and portmanteaux such as mudwist, mudsex, and mudfwation are awso reguwarwy coined. Puns on de "wet dirt" meaning of "mud" are endemic, as wif, for exampwe, de names of de ROM (Rivers of MUD), MUCK, MUSH, and CoffeeMUD codebases and de MUD Muddy Waters.

^ abcBartwe, Richard (2003). Designing Virtuaw Worwds. New Riders. pp. 9–10, 741. ISBN0-13-101816-7. [pp. 9-10] TinyMUD was dewiberatewy intended to be distanced from de prevaiwing hack-and-sway AberMUD stywe, and de "D" in its name was said to stand for "Dimension" (or, occasionawwy, "Domain") rader dan "Dungeon;" dis is de uwtimate cause of de MUD/MU* distinction dat was to arise some years water. [pp. 741] The "D" in MUD stands for "Dungeon" [...] because de version of ZORK Roy pwayed was a Fortran port cawwed DUNGEN.

^ abHahn, Harwey (1996). The Internet Compwete Reference (2nd ed.). Osborne McGraw-Hiww. p. 553. ISBN0-07-882138-X. [...] muds had evowved to de point where de originaw name was too confining, and peopwe started to say dat "MUD" stood for de more generic "Muwti-User Dimension" or "Muwti-User Domain".

^Schaefer, Dominik; Mardare, Cezarina; Savan, Awan; Sanchez, Miguew D.; Mei, Bastian; Xia, Wei; Muhwer, Martin; Ludwig, Awfred; Schuhmann, Wowfgang (2011-02-17). "High-Throughput Characterization of Pt Supported on Thin Fiwm Oxide Materiaw Libraries Appwied in de Oxygen Reduction Reaction". Anawyticaw Chemistry. American Chemicaw Society. 83 (6): 1916–1923. doi:10.1021/ac102303u. Programs in LPC programming wanguage were devewoped to perform de fowwowing tasks: First, each set of CVs was separated into singwe CVs, and each of dem were pwotted. An average CV from aww de CVs in one set was cawcuwated and pwotted as weww. Aww images bewonging to one set of CVs were combined into short animated movies to visuawize de changes over time. The graphs of de averaged CVs from aww measurement points widin a wine scan were combined into an animation for demonstrating de systematic changes awong each of de Pt stripes. After dat, specific parameters were extracted from each CV (see bewow). These parameters and some derived vawues were tabuwated and pwotted versus de x-coordinate of de measurement point. Thus, different graphs for each wine scan were created showing de changes in specific properties awong de dickness of de Pt stripe. The combined tabuwated data for each wafer was den used to pwot a 3D image of severaw parameters vs substrate composition and nominaw dickness. The LPC programs were compiwed using LDMud (V3.3.719).

^Stuart, Keif (2007-07-17). "MUD, PLATO and de dawn of MMORPGs". The Guardian. London, uh-hah-hah-hah. The ding is, dough, dat even if de wikes of Oubwiette did count as a virtuaw worwd, dey had pretty weww zero effect on de devewopment of today's virtuaw worwds. Fowwow de audit traiw back from Worwd of Warcraft, and you wind up at MUD.

^Carter, Randowph (2009-04-23). "Psychochiwd". Grinding to Vawhawwa. Retrieved 2010-04-19. The MUDs I pwayed extensivewy: Genocide (where I first used de name "Psychochiwd"), Highwands, Farside, Kerovnia, and Astaria.

^Stewart, Wiwwiam. "Summary MUD History". Living Internet. Containing many of de features of a D&D game, it added an interesting twist -- de dungeon master, de person who set-up and ran a D&D worwd, was pwayed by de Adventure computer program itsewf.

^Anderson, Tim; Gawwey, Stu. "The History of Zork". Zork was too much of a nonsense word, not descriptive of de game, etc., etc., etc. Siwwy as it sounds, we eventuawwy started cawwing it Dungeon, uh-hah-hah-hah. (Dave admits to suggesting de new name, but dat's onwy a minor sin, uh-hah-hah-hah.) When Bob de wunatic reweased his FORTRAN version to de DEC users' group, dat was de name he used.

^Kewwy, Kevin; Rheingowd, Howard (1993). "The Dragon Ate My Homework". Wired. 1 (3). In 1980, Roy Traubshaw, a British fan of de fantasy rowe-pwaying board game Dungeons and Dragons, wrote an ewectronic version of dat game during his finaw undergraduate year at Essex Cowwege. The fowwowing year, his cwassmate Richard Bartwe took over de game, expanding de number of potentiaw pwayers and deir options for action, uh-hah-hah-hah. He cawwed de game MUD (for Muwti-User Dungeons), and put it onto de Internet.

^Bartwe, Richard (1990). "Earwy MUD History". The program was awso becoming unmanageabwe, as it was written in assembwer. Hence, he rewrote everyding in BCPL, starting wate 1979 and working up to about Easter 1980. The finished product was de heart of de system which many peopwe came to bewieve was de "originaw" MUD. In fact, it was version 3.

^Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Pwaying MUDs on de Internet. John Wiwey & Sons, Inc. p. 7. ISBN0-471-11633-5. The acknowwedged originaw game known as "MUD" was devewoped in 1978 for de owd DEC-10 mainframe system at Essex University by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartwe.

^Wisner, Biww (1990-06-29). "A brief history of MUDs". awt.mud. The point of de game was to gain points untiw you achieved de rank of wizard, at which point you became immortaw and gained certain powers over mortaws. Points were scored by kiwwing dings or dropping treasure into a swamp. The game gained some popuwarity in Britain when a guest account was set up dat awwowed users on JANET (de British academic network) to pway during de smaww hours of de morning each day.

^Bartwe, Richard. "Incarnations of MUD". This is de "cwassic" MUD, pwayed by many peopwe bof internaw and externaw to de University. Awdough eventuawwy avaiwabwe onwy during night-time due to de effects of its popuwarity on de system, its impact on on-wine gaming has been immense. I eventuawwy cwosed it down on 30/9/87 upon weaving Essex University to work for MUSE fuww time.

^Lawrie, Michaew (2003). "Escape from de Dungeon". October of 1987 was chaos. The MUD account was deweted, but de guest account on Essex University remained open, uh-hah-hah-hah. I guess it wasn't causing any troubwe so dey simpwy weft it. ROCK, UNI and MUD aww ran from de MUD account so dey had gone but... MIST ran from a student account and it was stiww pwayabwe.

^Bartwe, Richard (1990). "Interactive Muwti-User Computer Games". Archived from de originaw on 2016-02-02. Awdough de present system went wive in October 1988, Gods began in 1985 as a non-commerciaw MUA; its audor was inspired by MUD1 to write his own game, and was among de first peopwe to do so. Gods was Shades' onwy rivaw to be de Prestew Micronet MUA.

^Bartwe, Richard (1990). "Interactive Muwti-User Computer Games". Archived from de originaw on 2016-02-02. Pip Cordrey used to run a BBS cawwed 'Labbs', which had a section devoted to MUD1 in its earwy days. Six peopwe from St. Pauw's Schoow worked on dat section, and Cordrey organised dem into a team to devewop a MUA dat wouwd run on a home computer. The system was named MirrorWorwd because it had rowwing resets (as in de fiwm "Westworwd"). It went wive in 1986.

^Kate & Frobozz (1986). "Micronet's Muwti-user Game". Commodore Computing Internationaw. Written by Neiw Neweww, originawwy as a hobby because he enjoyed pwaying- de originaw MUD so much on Essex University, SHADES has recentwy. been waunched on Micronet, de computer network, which has a warge Commodore user-base.

^Bartwe, Richard (1990). "Interactive Muwti-User Computer Games". Archived from de originaw on 2016-02-02. The Muwti-User Gawaxy Game project was begun in 1985 by CompuNet as a SF awternative to MUD1, which den ran on de system. When de oder programmer weft CompuNet, Lenton rewrote de game from scratch as Federation II. It was officiawwy waunched on CompuNet in 1989; reported awso to run on MicroLink, and on any oder commerciaw system wiwwing to take it.

^Wisner, Biww (1990-06-29). "A brief (and very incompwete) history of MUDs". awt.mud. Miwieu was originawwy written for a CDC Cyber owned by de Minnesota Educationaw Computer Consortium. High schoow students from around de state were given access to de machine for educationaw purposes; dey often ended up writing chat programs and games instead. I am uncertain of de precise time frame, but I bewieve Miwieu probabwy predates MUD.

^Kwietz, Awan (1992-01-20). "Scepter - de first MUD?". Retrieved 2010-04-26. As micros became cost effective, de MECC mainframe became obsowete and was shut down in 1983. Scepter den went commerciaw in a cowwaboration between severaw ex-MECC (and by den awso post-highschoow) game hackers. It was rewritten in C and ran on a PC XT running QNX. It supported 16 diawup users, and diawup instawwations were set up in 5 states and Canada. This exposed Scepter to a wot of budding MUD devewopers at a time when de Internet was just getting started.

^Hyrup, Darrin (2007-02-10). "The Future of Dragon's Gate". Retrieved 2010-04-26. So after more dan 15 years of great memories, wif a heavy heart, I am going to officiawwy decware Dragon's Gate cwosed... at weast for now.

^"A Study of MUDs as a Society". 1998. Some wouwd insist however dat 'MUD' does in fact stand for Muwti Undergraduate Destroyer, in recognition of de number of students who may have faiwed deir cwasses due to too much time spent MUDding!

^Bartwe, Richard. http://mud.co.uk/richard/imucg4.htm. When you weave de game, objects can be kept for when you restart (eg. dat weapon you commissioned from a smif), and you restart in de room from which you qwit. This means some objects can be kept unavaiwabwe for wong periods if deir owner isn't pwaying. There are no resets.Missing or empty |titwe= (hewp)

^Bartwe, Richard. "Reviews - UK". www.mud.co.uk. Experience is obtained by visiting new pwaces, wandering around expworing, and even by simpwy chatting. This contrasts wif de usuaw MUA scheme where points are obtained for finding treasure or performing specific tasks.

^Bartwe, Richard. "Reviews- UK". www.mud.co.uk. Awmost anyding can be bought, incwuding houses, shops, taverns, animaws, weapons, food and drink. Personae may use certain skiwws to create objects, eg. potions, which can be sowd to oder pwayers for use on deir adventures.

^Bartwe, Richard (2003). Designing Virtuaw Worwds. New Riders. p. 741. ISBN0-13-101816-7. AberMUD spread across university computer science departments wike a virus. Identicaw copies (or incarnations) appeared on dousands of Unix machines. It went drough four versions in rapid succession, spawning severaw imitators. The dree most important of dese were TinyMUD, LPMUD, and DikuMUD.

^Skrenta, Richard (1997-01-13). "An Introduction to Monster". Retrieved 2010-04-26. Monster awwows pwayers to do someding dat very few, if any, oder games awwow: de pwayers demsewves create de fantasy worwd as part of de game. Pwayers can create objects, make wocations, and set up puzzwes for oder pwayers to sowve.

^Aspnes, James (1990-07-04). "Monster". awt.mud. TinyMUD 1.0 was initiawwy designed as a portabwe, stripped-down version of Monster (dis was back in de days when TinyMUD was designed to be up and running in a week of coding and wast for a monf before everybody got bored of it.)

^Burka, Lauren P. (1995). "The MUDwine". Retrieved 2010-04-26. August 19, 1989. Jim Aspnes announces de avaiwabiwity of TinyMUD to a few friends. Its port, 4201, is Aspnes' office number. TinyMUD is written in C for Unix, and was originawwy conceived as a front-end for IRC.

^Muwwigan, Jessica; Patrovsky, Bridgette (2003). Devewoping Onwine Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders. p. 451. ISBN1-59273-000-0. 1989 [...] Lars Penjske creates LPMud and opens Genesis. "Having fun pwaying TinyMUD and AberMUD, Lars Penjske decides to write a server to combine de extensibiwity of TinyMUD wif de adventures of AberMUD. Out of dis inspiration, he designed LPC as a speciaw MUD wanguage to make extending de game simpwe. Lars says, '...I didn't dink I wouwd be abwe to design a good adventure. By awwowing wizards coding rights, I dought oders couwd hewp me wif dis.' The first running code was devewoped in a week on Unix System V using IPC, not BSD sockets. Earwy object-oriented features onwy existed accidentawwy by way of de nature of MUDs manipuwating objects. As Lars wearned C++, he graduawwy extended dose features. The resuwt is dat de whowe LPMud was devewoped from a smaww prototype, graduawwy extended wif features." —George Reese'sLPMud Timewine

^Stewart, Wiwwiam (2002). "MUD History". The originaw LPMUD was written by Lars Pensjö and oders, and became one of de most popuwar MUD's by de earwy 1990s.

^Cambron, Mewanie (2002). "A chat wif Ewonka Dunin". Archived from de originaw on 2007-09-27. Simutronics was originawwy de brain-chiwd of David Whatwey. As a teenager, he'd been big into de owd BBS days and had even written some Fantasy Game BBS software dat he sowd aww over de worwd, and he did dis aww from his parents' home. He’d awso gotten invowved as a pwayer in some of de earwy muwtipwayer games dat were out dere such as Sceptre and Iswand of Kesmai, and, wike many oders who pway dese games, he dought to himsewf, "I can do dis too." So in 1987, at de age of 21, he founded Simutronics Corporation wif Tom and Susan Zewinski.

^Reese, George (1996-03-11). "LPMud Timewine". Archived from de originaw on 2012-02-26. Retrieved 2010-04-14. January 1992 ¶ _Genocide_ starts as de first MUD dedicated totawwy to inter-pwayer confwict, which is a fancy way of saying dat its deme is creativewy pwayer-kiwwing.

^Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Pwaying MUDs on de Internet. John Wiwey & Sons, Inc. pp. 98–99. ISBN0-471-11633-5. Some Muds are compwetewy dependant on pwayer-kiwwing, and have wars dat start every hawf-hour or so. These Muds are becoming more common, basing a wot of deir ideas on de extremewy popuwar LPmud known as Genocide.

^Bartwe, Richard (2003). Designing Virtuaw Worwds. New Riders. p. 3. ISBN0-13-101816-7. Confusingwy, awdough de term MUD appwies to virtuaw worwds in generaw, de term MU* does not—it's used strictwy for text-based worwds. The introduction of computer graphics into de mix derefore caused a second spate of naming, in order to make a distinction between graphicaw MUDs and text MUDs.

^Castronova, Edward (2006). Syndetic Worwds: The Business and Cuwture of Onwine Games. University Of Chicago Press. p. 291. ISBN0-226-09627-0. [...] estabwished Habitat as a resuwt. This is described as a 2D graphicaw MUD, and whiwe we now know dat Habitat was de first of many massivewy muwtiuser graphicaw chat spaces, we awso know dat de connection is not direct. [...] Its owners and makers (particuwarwy F. Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar) [...]

^Firor, Matt (2003). "Post-Mortem: Mydic's Dark Age of Camewot". In Muwwigan, Jessica; Patrovsky, Bridgette. Devewoping Onwine Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders. p. 340. ISBN1-59273-000-0. It made perfect sense for us to combine de two technowogies and make a graphicaw MUD.

^Dobson, James (2007-05-03). "Q&A: Behind RuneScape's 1 Miwwion Subscriber Success". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2010-04-24. When I went to university, I discovered text-based MUDs, or muwti-user dungeons. I woved de fact dat dese sorts of games had aww dese pwayers pwaying at once - even when you were not pwaying, de worwd carried on widout you. Because of dis, I began creating my own text-based MUD, but I qwickwy reawized dat wif so many of dem out dere, dere was no way dat mine wouwd ever get noticed. So I began to search for a way to make mine stand out, and de obvious way, of course, was to add graphics. Wif my game, I was trying to emuwate text MUDs at de time, purewy as a hobby.

^Funk, John (2008-07-23). "WarCry and Jagex Tawk RuneScape". WarCry Network. Retrieved 2009-01-06. Owifiers began wif a brief history of Jagex and RuneScape: how Lead Devewoper Andrew Gower and his broder Pauw founded de company in Cambridge in 2001, bringing deir wove for cwassic MUDs into de visuaw reawm. The originaw RuneScape (now referred to as RuneScape Cwassic) was simpwy and exactwy dat: a 2D graphicaw interface pwaced on top of a MUD

^Safko, Ron; Brake, David (2009). The Sociaw Media Bibwe: Tactics, Toows, and Strategies for Business Success. Wiwey. ISBN0-470-41155-4. Richard Garriott first coined de term MMORPG in 1997.

^Bartwe, Richard (2003). Designing Virtuaw Worwds. New Riders. p. 43. ISBN0-13-101816-7. Above dis wayer is what (for historicaw reasons) is known as de mudwib58. [...] 58For "mud wibrary". MUD1 had a mudwib, but it was an adaptation of de BCPL input/output wibrary and derefore was at a wower wevew dan today's mudwibs. The modern usage of de term was coined independentwy by LPMUD.

^Busey, Andrew (1995). Secrets of de MUD Wizards. SAMS Pubwishing. p. 239. ISBN0-672-30723-5. MUDLib is short for MUD wibrary. [...] Fiwes widin a MUDLib are akin to books on de shewves of a wibrary.

^Bartwe, Richard (2003). Designing Virtuaw Worwds. New Riders. p. 43. ISBN0-13-101816-7. The mudwib defines de physics of a virtuaw worwd, which wiww incwude dings such as mass/weight, timers, movement and communication, awong wif higher concepts such as (in a game context) magic and combat mechanisms.

^Reese, George (1996-03-11). "LPMud Timewine". Archived from de originaw on 2012-02-26. Retrieved 2010-04-18. Late 1991 ¶ After de retirement of Lars from _Genesis_, de _Genesis_ admins move to create de first LPMud-derived server, CD. CD stands for Chawmers Datorforening, Swedish for Chawmers Computing Cwub, where _Genesis_ and _Igor_ existed. In spite of his retirement from _Genesis_, Lars continued to devewop LPMud.ad

^Towers, J. Tarin; Badertscher, Ken; Cunningham, Wayne; Buskirk, Laura (1996). Yahoo! Wiwd Web Rides. IDG Books Worwdwide Inc. p. 138. ISBN0-7645-7003-X. The MUD Connector at http://www.mudconnect.com has just about everyding you couwd possibwy need to get on a MUD. It has MUD-rewated winks to FAQs, newsgroups and cwients; as weww as pwayer discussions and forums about different MUDs. This site awso has a wisting of over 500 MUDs, wif pretty usefuw descriptions of what you can expect to find on most games. You can even cwick on de MUD or home page you'd wike to see and wink right to it. If you're shopping for a new MUD and aren't sure what you're wooking for, dis is de pwace to park it. We're tawking big time bookmark materiaw here.

^Pantuso, Joe (1996). The Compwete Internet Gamer. John Wiwey & Sons. p. 115. ISBN0471137871. The Mud Connector has, at de time of dis writing, winks to 205 active Muds. The Muds are reviewed periodicawwy, so dere are few dead winks. What sets dis site apart from some of de oder Mud wink connections wisted here is dat each wink incwudes de name of de Mud, de kind of code it is based on (nice for devewopers), de tewnet address written out, an active hyperwink to de tewnet site and Web home page if one exists, and a short but usefuw description of de Mud. The wist is awphabetized and broken into four sections for easy woading. There are awso forms for submitting your Mud to de wist. There is even a page for dead winks in case you want to see what has gone before.

^Condon, Wiwwiam; Butwer, Wayne (1997). Writing de Information Superhighway. Longman, uh-hah-hah-hah. p. 306. ISBN020519575X. "The Mud Connector" is a compwete on-wine service designed to provide de most up-to-date wistings of registered Muwtiuser on-wine games. Every entry wists de site of de game, de base code used, descriptions of de game as submitted by de administrators, winks to WWW homepages (when avaiwabwe), and Tewnet winks to de game.

^Hahn, Harwey (1996). The Internet Compwete Reference (2nd ed.). p. 553. ISBN0-07-882138-X. The word "mud" is awso used as a verb. For exampwe, you might hear someone say, "I wike to mud more dan I wike to sweep," or "I am a bit tired, as I was up aww night mudding, so maybe you better go to cwass widout me".